Christ, this Republican primary just keeps getting weirder by the hour:

In case you can’t watch the video, here’s what Cruz said today about the National Enquirer story alleging that Cruz has had multiple affairs:

It is a story that quoted one source on the record: Roger Stone, Donald Trump’s chief political adviser. It is attacking my family. And what is striking is Donald’s henchman, Roger Stone, had for months been foreshadowing that this attack was coming. It’s not surprising that Donald’s tweet occurs the day before the attack comes out. And I would note that Mr. Stone is a man who has 50 years of dirty tricks behind him. He’s a man for whom a term was coined for copulating with a rodent. Well, let me be clear: Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him.

and “Sleazy Donald” is the best he can come up with? Pshhht…that is some lame-ass material. Did appreciate having both “tweet” and “ratfvcking” in one press conference though. It’s a new era, boys and girls…

Posted in the other thread, but now here. The Donald’s response to this is pure Trumpian assholery (of which I am laughing at both of them for):

I have no idea whether or not the cover story about Ted Cruz in this week’s issue of the National Enquirer is true or not, but I had absolutely nothing to do with it, did not know about it, and have not, as yet, read it.

Likewise, I have nothing to do with the National Enquirer and unlike Lyin’ Ted Cruz I do not surround myself with political hacks and henchman and then pretend total innocence. Ted Cruz’s problem with the National Enquirer is his and his alone, and while they were right about O.J. Simpson, John Edwards, and many others, I certainly hope they are not right about Lyin’ Ted Cruz.

I look forward to spending the week in Wisconsin, winning the Republican nomination and ultimately the Presidency in order to Make America Great Again.

Are any of the Villagers still saying that the Republiklowns are the grownups in the room, and always the ones with presidential gravitas?

FWIW, I heard one of the NPR talking heads (mara liasson, maybe?) a few days ago talking about how terrorism/national security issues usually benefit Republicans because the american people trust them more, and i was about to throw my radio against the wall. But then the talking head quickly followed that up with “But this election year things very well could be different.” I still hate the premise, but at least there was some acknowledgement of the ongoing insanity.

Assuming, as most of us do, that the source touching off this revelation of The Thing was the Trump campaign, can anyone explain to me why now? Why not wait until closer to the convention and use it as a coup de grace if needed if Cruz was getting too close? Or, since the polls showed Trump losing in Utah, why not let loose before that primary? Or is it not in fact a calculated political move at all, but really, truly a juvenile tit for tat because of that tweet from the Cruz PAC? Is anyone really steering USS Trump, or is it just veering wildly wherever? Seems like we keep oscillating between thinking that Trump is a masterful manipulator of R politics and Trump is an impulsive and out of control frat boy.

yes, but Hillz is untrustworthy because she used an e-mail server like her predecessors and Bill catted around and who can forget the deeper truths still hidden in Benghazi?…

okay, I got nuttin’… if the standardbearer for the family values caucus and fuck about with impunity and be forgiven, then lets face it, these people really do have no morals or standards that they will honor and they just want to win (or in certain cases, maybe just not lose)

I hope that these guys are embraced by the GOP and ridden into the hard wet ground where there’s nothing left but a smear, in which nothing grows for at least a generation.

@smith: It’ll make it tough to have the NotTrump forces congeal around praiseJesus Cruz. After Rubio drops out is pretty much perfect timing; the only downside is having Cruz drop out in favor of Kasich, which seems wildly implausible.

So the guy who ratfucked Ben Carson is now complaining about dirty tricks from the Trump campaign. This entire Republican nominating process has been more than any Democrat could ever imagine in their wildest dreams.

I’ve been offline for most of this week and I must admit that as I read this thread, I feel like I’ve stepped into bizarro world. Did things get exponentially crazier in a few days or was I just used to it before a few days off?

Sadly, Rule 34 dictates that, somewhere out there, Cruz/Trump slashfic has already been written. But I ain’t getting out of the boat to look for it, lest I end up like a viewpoint character in an H.P. Lovecraft story.

I see… a misty haze emanating from the editorial offices and newsrooms of this country. I collect a sample and examine the constituents of the haze under a microscope. It consists of tiny droplets of WTF.

Well, let me be clear: Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him.

Somewhere there’s a writer for Cruz who had some blistering comeback he wrote and rewrote and rewrote into incomprehensibility (obviously playing on the term ‘rat-fucking’), but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it was.

PS: Stop saying “let me be clear,” Republicans. President Obama can pull that off. You cannot.

Actually, no one can pull it off. It sounds stupid when Obama says it too, especially since it has become such a tic of his. Before Obama it was Condoleeza Rice who was always saying “Let me be very clear…” or “Let’s get one thing clear…”

Jeebus, these people.
On the right, it’s nothing but the Handmaid’s Tale.
And the desire for a big strong daddy.
And the ratfkg, always the ratfkg.
A close friend is in Portland at a Bernie rally. The place is packed to the rafters.
I doubt Mara Liasson will get around to mentioning it.

If Hillary or Bernie don’t win in a landslide, this country is dumber than I currently believe it to be. The repub primary is so inane and unbelievably juvenile that at some point even the average repub voter has to think the party is the problem and Trump and Cruz are just a reflection of it. This leads me to think (hope) the House could flip as well as the Senate.

Actually, no one can pull it off. It sounds stupid when Obama says it too, especially since it has become such a tic of his. Before Obama it was Condoleeza Rice who was always saying “Let me be very clear…” or “Let’s get one thing clear…”

In legal writing whenever I see a draft with “To be clear” or “Clearly,” in it, I cut it. If you feel the need to say “To be clear” then you’re probably not being clear enough in the preceding sentence. And if you think a point is clear, just make the point.

@dedc79: absolutely the same is true in oral argument. When a lawyer says, “clearly” I think they are probably hiding something and likely losing. I tell students to never use clearly or plainly. Ever.

@efgoldman: Grandpa Walnuts has a really good Democratic opponent this time around plus Arizonans are rightfully PISSED at the Maricopa county voting mishegas. We could see a VERY different Senate next term.

It’s starting to remind me of Obama’s US Senate campaign in 2004 where his opponent had to withdraw because it turned out he had been forcing his wife (Jeri Ryan, aka Seven of Nine) to accompany him to swingers’ clubs against her wishes and they had to import crazy Alan Keyes as a placeholder.

What is this magic power Obama has to make his opponents self-destruct? Whatever it is, I’m glad he saved it until we really needed it.

Well, let me be clear: Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him.

At last, something Ted Cruz and I agree on. On the topic at hand, this shit is just crazy. I would never have expected to see a gossip-rag scandal disrupt a presidential campaign season, like this one is threatening to do.

Sleazy Donald versus Lyin’ Ted. I guess if politics is Hollywood for ugly people, it can be WWE with boring characters. Really need to get Springer or Povich producing the fight, and some good WWE managers to intro for the candidates and set up of promos with the wrestlers yelling and name calling.

The sad hacks that run today’s pathetic loser rump of the GOP can’t do anything right. Need to yank the flaccid soporific Priebus and get some people in there who know how to put on this kind of show..

Frankly, I could not care less whether this is true or not. I would certainly never vote for Cruz (nor Trump) for any reason whatsoever for a wide variety of reasons, so there is zero impact there. It’s only interesting in that it’s just yet another reason why the Republican primary process has veered into the gutter because of Trump, which has debased our democratic system and made the U.S. a laughingstock of the world. It’s like a very bad reality TV show, and despite its prurient interest, I wish it would go away.

@Yutsano: @efgoldman: Ann Kirkpatrick already has an ad of an increasingly cranky McCain barking out his support for Trump that I think is a killer.

Seems to me there’s another double-edged ad waiting to be made of McCain saying in 2010 “build the dang fence” (to the mini-Arpaio sheriff who was later revealed to be having an affair with an undocumented immigrant) with his vote for immigration reform, show Senator Integrity as the flip-flopper he is and piss off the hard right at the same time, who are already pretty suspicious of him.

ETA and OT: Just heard Tweety in the other room lamenting that “Paris” now means terrorism. Not to me, it doesn’t.

Well, let me be clear: Donald Trump may be a rat, but I have no desire to copulate with him.

Wut?

…

Did Cruz just say that he has no desire to fuck with Donald Trump?

That … doesn’t mean what you think it means Teddy. The lesson Trump is trying to teach you is that you don’t want to fuck with him. If you’re telling him you don’t want to fuck with him, then the lesson is learned.

Also, clicking around to see what I missed online, I find that my US Representative, Rod Blum, says the economy in DC is too healthy as evidenced by the amount of building going on. He says DC needs a recession. Man, I hope we vote this guy out in November.

I suppose that in a way, this tawdry business has been much like the general tendency of this presidential cycle: the Democrats act like and appeal to adults (mostly), while the Republicans degenerate into vulgarity and pettiness. And we learn that vulgarity and pettiness are disturbingly popular.

@muddy: In the more classic definition of ratfucking , Cruz would have secretly circulated a false, disprovable rumor to provide cover against a real scandal subsequently being revealed. If what the National Enquirer has to say is true, it isn’t r-f. (Wasn’t Anonymous threatening to reveal information about Cruz and prostitutes several days ago?)

@Archon: Nate Silver recently tweeted a map he’d made with 270towin of what he thought a Clinton v. Trump election held today would be like. I don’t think it was based on any actual state data; it was just Nate guessing approximately what the electoral map might look like with about a 10-point lead for Clinton, which is what the national head-to-head polls say now.

It had her winning not just NC and Colorado, but also Georgia and Arizona. Not Utah, though there was an actual poll showing her leading in Utah. He thought Trump would still get Indiana and Missouri.

As I’ve been watching the latest season of House of Cards, I keep thinking that real politics could never get this crazy. Then this shit happens. Way to go reality, you really are stranger than fiction.

Party of personal responsibility! I honestly don’t give a fuck how many women/men/inanimate objects that Ted Cruz has sex with, that’s between him and those poor masochistic women/men/inanimate objects, but if it ends up being true, it kind of I dunno…..BLOWS THE WHOLE FAMILY VALUES idea the fuck out of the water.

I wish we could get a Dan Savage sexual act naming going for Cruz. I guess it’s not as unique sounding as Santorum.

The great irony of that comment is that the building boom in D.C. is pretty much all for the private sector. The constellation of cranes on the waterfront, for instance, is a long-awaited redevelopment, with billions of dollars of private investment for mixed use buildings that, so far as I know, won’t include any federal agencies.

Heck, D.C. didn’t make a serious bid to keep the FBI headquarters (a hulking presence two blocks from my office that covers two full blocks and fronts on Pennsylvania Avenue) because it knows that private developers are dying to get access to that site and will pay significant property taxes that the FBI won’t.

Assuming, as most of us do, that the source touching off this revelation of The Thing was the Trump campaign, can anyone explain to me why now? Why not wait until closer to the convention and use it as a coup de grace if needed if Cruz was getting too close? Or, since the polls showed Trump losing in Utah, why not let loose before that primary?

I thought it was a response for them putting up that Ad in Utah with Melania.

@Amir Khalid: Popular in that “what the hell!” way, which is not good for the GOP. Cruz and Trump are humiliating the Republican elites and pulling the whole party into the mud pits. Not sure how they gloss over this election cycle after November.

@Iowa Old Lady: Late Senator Robert Byrd was instrumental in having numerous federal agencies move parts of their operations to West Virginia, and even made sure the feds built the roads to get them there.

@Mike in NC: They’ve got to look out for their own. Plus, you know how animals always react to people that they find objectionable? I doubt he can corner the sheep and the horses. They can probably smell the evil.

I still think that one of Obama’s biggest strengths as a politician is that he doesn’t buy into all of the white guy machismo, so he doesn’t fall for the traps that other white guy politicians would fall for.

The Republican primary is all about white guy machismo, so Trump is getting them to fall into his traps. I think he’s going to find it a lot harder to use the same attacks on Hillary, who similarly is not going to be impressed by white guy machismo.

I’m hoping she can work in a reference to the old feminist joke about why women have poor spatial perception (answer: because we keep being told that this (holding thumb and index finger an inch apart) is 10 inches).

@Mnemosyne: I think HRC should just stay away from the whole stench and nonsense.

But we supporters? I for one want to see Ted in a t-shirt cowering behind one of Springer’s guards after the baby daddy test comes in, and somebody in the audience stands up to tell him off, and some of the women coming in to rip him apart.

They’re in about year 3 of the bid process, and it’s down to 3 finalists for sites, two in Maryland and one in Virginia. I’m betting on the Virginia site because it’s closer to Quantico, but I don’t really have the slightest idea what they’ll choose. Once a site is picked, it will be probably 5 more years before the FBI actually moves.

The FBI will be there for a while, as the bidding process hasn’t even been completed and I’m sure it will take years to build the new HQ. So far as I know, the education center or whatever they call it is still open, but it’s worth noting that you need to get tickets pretty far in advance and you have to get them through one of your Congresscritters.

You can find out more information if you go to the FBI site and find the page for the headquarters. (And definitely check out the A-Z subject list for the site, which includes such fascinating entries as “Al Capone” and “NCIS,” the latter of which I assume is there because people go to the wrong site all the time.)

@cleek: Thanks for that link. I started checking out the twitter machine and it does look like Rubio’s camp had something they were not yet ready to divulge. I wonder if it is because Rubio was so ‘sure’ he would take FL that he could then take on Cruz.
Noticed several interesting tweets under #thething

just yet another reason why the Republican primary process has veered into the gutter because of Trump, which has debased our democratic system and made the U.S. a laughingstock of the world.

Might I just suggest that every time Trump, Cruz, and the GOP in general do something embarrassing, that we all stick together and point out that it’s embarrassing…to Trump, Cruz, and the GOP in general?

Trump and Cruz are not a stain on America – they’re stains on their party.

Their supporters? Likewise.

The vast majority of Americans are not interested in having anything to do with these two clowns (and increasingly, it appears, with the GOP in general). So let’s not give the media or our co-workers or our friends and relatives or whomever this kind of latitude, this opportunity for false equivalence.

Trump, Cruz, and the GOP in general are sewer backups at this point. Let’s make sure they own that by not making it seem like the rest of America has anything to do with them.

@gogol’s wife: @jl: I listened to the Cruz press conference, and he honestly strikes me as a politico character straight out of The Simpsons, right down to voice and appearance. All the tweaking needed is to paint that punchable face yellow.

With respect to the lame-ass sobriquets Trump and Cruz are throwing at one another, I’d really like to see them up their game. I think that I can totally get behind tossing Trump a fiver if he refers to Cruz as Senator Skeevy McWeaselton.

It’s like sharks feeding in shallow water, the internet on Cruz now. I’ve never seen anything like the speed with which these strange ugly underbelly people are leaping on this. Having waited quietly until the moment he gave the press talk and it became ‘legitimate’ ‘real’ ‘news.’

Seems like that pattern for entrapment-by-press (since at least Edwards?) is happening, where they put out a little news, let him deny it, then put out something else, wait for denial, then start springing evidence to counter what he said, right up until the next votes.

It sure feels like cards have been played one by one, all this week. But wasn’t he vetted for this? Could he have been this addicted to his own narcotic and believed this wouldn’t happen? It’s really weird. Or am I just hallucinating?